Farmers across Vermont have inspired countless young people, but the question remains: How many of their own children, who grew up intimately acquainted farming life, will choose to tread their parents' path?

Free Press correspondent

Last Resort Farm, run by Sam Burr, Eugenie Doyle, and son Silas Doyle-Burr, is located in Monkton. / MADDIE MCGARVEY/FREE PRESS

The Last Resort Farm, run by Sam Burr, Eugenie Doyle and son Silas Doyle-Burr, is located in Monkton. / MADDIE MCGARVEY/FREE PRESS

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MONKTON — Standing in front of the barn at Last Resort Farm on a recent Wednesday afternoon, farmers Eugenie Doyle and Sam Burr reflected on the paths taken by their three grown children.

“We always involved them in everything and we believed it was a good way to raise a family,” said Doyle. “We wanted them to have the skills, to know how to grow their own food. We wanted them to have a good work ethic.”

“I remember when Nora was little,” Doyle, 60, recalled of her eldest child. “She said she wanted to be a doctor and a farmer. I told her that was good, because then she’d be able to afford to farm.”

Nora Doyle-Burr, 28, is now a journalist in the Northeast Kingdom, but her 25-year-old twin brothers have split her childhood career dreams. Caleb is in medical school in New York City, while Silas returned home in 2011 to explore integrating an aquaponics venture into the family’s certified organic vegetable, berry, egg and hay farm after he had spent several years in China as an agri-business consultant.

Silas Doyle-Burr runs pilot tests for a planned closed-loop system that will raise farmed trout in the repurposed base of an old dairy feed silo and recirculate the fish effluent to nourish edible greens and maybe strawberries — and he represents a second generation of pioneering farmers.

Doyle and Burr were among those who arrived in Vermont in the late ’60s and ’70s with little to no farming background, fueled by dreams of back-to-the-land self-sufficiency. Along with growing vegetables, they often raised families, and some eventually built solid farming businesses that provided a livelihood, good food and leadership within Vermont’s organic farming community.

During the past few decades, farmers including Doyle and Burr, Anne and Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm, Judy and Will Stevens of Golden Russet Farm in Shoreham and Karen and Jack Manix of Walker Farm and Garden Center in East Dummerston, along with others across Vermont, have inspired and helped countless young people to try their hand at smaller-scale, community-based, sustainable farming.

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But the question remains how many of their own children, who grew up intimately acquainted with the highs and lows of farming life, will follow in their parents’ muddy footsteps, benefiting from the lessons they have to share while carving out their own place on the farm.

'Owning your own boots'

Clara Coleman, the 36-year-old daughter of organic farming trailblazer Eliot Coleman of Maine, addressed this issue in her keynote at the 31st annual Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) winter conference themed “Generations of Innovation” and held recently at the University of Vermont with more than 1,000 attendees.

Eliot Coleman, 74, introduced his daughter, harkening back to a time when to pursue farming without using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides was considered particularly strange. “I remember back in ’68,” Coleman said, “going into the Extension Service offices and mentioning organic gardening and farming, and all the extension agents that were sitting in there looked around to see if I’d tracked manure in on the carpet. That’s how popular we were back then.”

Other attitudes also have changed for the better, Coleman continued. “For so many generations, farming was something that people wanted to get out of, but now farming is again celebrated for the fact that it’s the basis of civilization, and it is the source of human health and human satisfaction. …We’re talking about passing that on, and the influence of those who were crazy enough to get into organic farming years ago are the ideal people to inspire their children to become the next generation.”

Following in her father’s path as an organic farmer and then developing a four-season farm consulting business, Clara Coleman said, has always meant recognizing the elephant of his accomplishment in the room. Well, actually, she clarified with a grin, “more like the gigantic prize-winning 18-pound onion in the room. Hard to compete with that.”

Still, she recalled the “many tender moments in the potting greenhouse” working together with seedlings and soil blocks at The Mountain School in Vershire, where her father ran the farm in the 1980s. Occasionally when she tired of helping, she’d put her small feet in his enormous rubber boots and stumble around, she said, “giggling, ‘Look at me, Papa! I’m a farmer.’”

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Whether building on a family tradition or venturing into a new field, she said, every farmer must focus on “ultimately owning their own boots.”

Getting some distance

Clara Coleman first established herself as a farmer in Colorado, putting some distance between her work and her father’s shadow, before recently returning to Maine. Many young second-generation Vermont farmers including Silas Doyle-Burr also have seen value in spreading their wings.

Working in Beijing and Shanghai on projects for global giants such as Cargill and Monsanto was “a completely opposite type of agriculture, an eye-opening experience,” Doyle-Burr said, compared with growing up on an organic Vermont farm. “It’s always good to have a full perspective,” he continued. “It made me appreciate here more.

“I came back with a vision for shifting to more efficient ways of farming with technological innovation but still a focus on the environment,” Doyle-Burr added, noting that he also spent time evaluating market opportunities. “Figuring out something that’s sustainable both for the farm and for the environment is what this farm has always been about.”

Sam Burr noted that incorporating a new venture that is complementary to an existing business can be a healthy way to integrate the second generation. “There are less turf issues,” he said.

His son added that he appreciates having ready access to the experience of his parents. “Being a first-generation farmer can be very difficult,” Doyle-Burr said. They, in turn, appreciate his young, strong back and new ideas. “It kind of keeps us young, too, having to keep up,” said his mother.

All in all, the older generation said, there seems to be more to consider than when they began farming. The family is working with a farm viability consultant, and they try to have weekly meetings; a yellow piece of paper on the fridge lists tasks to be accomplished by family member.

“We started in a simpler place,” Burr said.

“Our generation pretended we didn’t care about money, and now our children are taking us to task,” Eugenie Doyle said, smiling.

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“Well, we’re realistic,” their son added gently.

Hard work, good life

Growing up on a farm quickly dispels most fantasies of the pastoral life.

“One June when I was 6 or 7, I was weeding the strawberries, and these two women were nearby picking. They were saying how it was so beautiful here, and the strawberries were so great,” Doyle-Burr recalled. “Then they asked me if I wanted to take over the farm someday. I remember saying unequivocally no, and thinking when you’re here for just a short while it’s easy to see all the benefits and the beauty, but you don’t necessarily see all the hard work.”

“It’s a grind, farming,” said Christine Mahoney, 33, who grew up the only child of Jack and Anne Lazor of Butterworks Farm in Westfield, where she now lives and works with her husband and two young daughters.

“It’s always challenging for anyone in farming to make a living. I’ve never been under any illusions,” Mahoney continued. “But it’s a pretty good life. It’s a good place to be, and it’s a really good place to have a family. And the food is just so good.”

Room for both generations

The Lazors started out as homesteaders in 1973 “and then began to sell something when we had to,” joked Jack Lazor, 61. With the help of about a dozen employees, the farm produces yogurt and other dairy products that are distributed throughout Vermont and the Northeast, as well as some dry beans and grains.

Mahoney deals mostly with orders and customer relations, while her husband, Collin Mahoney, 39, is the herdsman. Like the Doyle-Burrs, the family has worked with a farm viability consultant on a transition strategy and tries to have weekly family meetings.

“We are privileged to have an established brand and established markets,” Christine Mahoney said. But, she added, “finding your own spot in that can be hard.”

“We built this business from the ground up,” Lazor said. “I’ve learned I have to share my vision with other people. We’re not going to be here forever. … I’ve got confidence in Christine and Collin, and I know I have to accept what they want to do. A lot of it is letting go.

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“My biggest joy,” Lazor added, “is watching the two little granddaughters run around with no shoes, the youngest one climbing all over the cows, and knowing that your legacy is there.”

'It's pretty much your life'

Many of the first generation of organic farming couples found support and strength in shared goals with their spouse, such as Judy and Will Stevens, now 52 and 57, who met in the environmental studies department at the University of Vermont and established Golden Russet Farm in Shoreham in 1984.

Their middle child, Pauline Stevens, 24, came home every summer during college to work on the 10 acres of organic plants and vegetables. “In Middlebury, everyone knows us and the farm, and they’ll say ‘I saw your produce in the co-op; it’s so beautiful,’” she said.

Her older brother is happy working in agriculture and horticulture in northern California for now, and her younger sister is still in college, but Stevens feels the pull. She worked on the farm after college, but in early 2012 landed a temporary job with a Mad River Valley-based environmental nonprofit to tide her through the non-farming months. That job eventually became full-time, and she considers herself lucky, although she has not completely ruled out returning to the farm.

“Ultimately, I don’t know about farming,” Stevens said. “I know my parents worked so hard to build such an amazing business. I know it’s extremely rewarding in many ways, but it’s pretty much your life,” she said. The case might be different, the young woman added, “if I was in a relationship with someone who was passionate about it.”

Family pride

Down in East Dummerston, Karen Manix, 62, admitted that she and her husband, Jack, 63, did not expect their two children to settle on their Walker Farm and Garden Center with its 30 acres in vegetables, 21 greenhouses and 35 employees at peak season — but both eventually did.

“We were surprised and grateful,” she said as her infant grandson cooed in the background. “Just being together and having that common goal and interest. It’s everything to me.”

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The Manixes met in college in Boston; neither had grown up farming, but in 1973, when they came to visit Jack’s grandfather on the farm that had been in the family since 1770, “it just clicked,” Karen Manix said. He did not encourage them, she recalled, having been obliged to take over when he was just 18 and his father died unexpectedly. “He told us, ‘When the potato bugs come, you hit them with lead arsenic,’” she said. “That just seemed wrong to us. We were pretty much hippies at that point. We tried to seek out some groovier ways.”

Both Kristin Manix, 37, and Dustin, 35, left home to work and travel before returning. “Each time I went away, I just had much more of a draw when coming back,” Dustin Manix said.

The challenges, he said, are also rewards: “It’s very hard work, but there’s a lot of satisfaction in it. There are infinite things to learn. You could spend a lifetime just learning about tomatoes, let alone employee benefits.

“Overall, it’s a great work environment, and it’s great to work with family and longtime employees who are like family,” Dustin Manix said. “Not only is there such community appreciation for what we do here, but everyone on the farm takes pride in doing that together.”